Inbound M&A Transactions & Investments in the News in July
Continuing with the overworked agricultural metaphor for inbound mergers and acquisitions activity, rainy July did not produce many more green shoots. What grew was largely confined to the fields of pharma, medical devices and battery technology.
On July 14, Japanese pharma business Hisamitsu Pharmaceutical announced its offer to purchase publicly-traded Miami-based Noven Pharmaceuticals for approximately $428 million. According to Corporate Financing Weekly, Hisamitsu is pursuing its strategy of expanding within the U.S. CFW also notes that the 22% premium being paid is slightly below the average premium for pharma transactions announced to date in 2009. Since 2005 there has been a shift to more inbound deals than outbound deals in this sector. The Hisamitsu/Noven transaction is one of $47.4 billion of inbound pharma deals to date this year.
Dublin, Ireland-based medical device maker Covidien PLC announced on July 30 that it will buy OTCBB-traded Power Medical Interventions Inc. for about $39 million plus assumption of $25 million of debt. Power Medical is based in Langhorne, Pennsylvania and the world's only provider of computer-assisted, power-actuated surgical cutting and stapling products. According to DeviceSpace, once the transaction has been completed, the acquired company will report as part of Covidien’s Endomechanical product line in its Medical Devices segment.
July brought another inbound deal in the battery technologies segment. On July 14, SB LiMotive announced that it had agreed to purchase Cobasys LLC of Orion Michigan (formerly GM Ovonics) from owners Chevron Corporation and Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. According to The Daily Deal, the nickel metal hydride batteries that Cobasys manufactures now are considered second tier to lithium-ion batteries. Other companies are choosing lithium-ion batteries since they weigh less and provide more power in less space. SB LiMotive is a $520 million joint venture between Samsung SDI Co. Ltd. of South Korea and Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany. The SB Limotive joint venture was formed last year to market lithium-ion batteries. This transaction follows the activity in battery technology earlier in the summer involving Tesla motors. See our earlier post on the Tesla deal with Daimler.
August can be a surprise month in the capital markets. The great bull market of the 1980’s started during August 1982. We’re rooting for the comeback, vacations or not.
